Last year during the Super Bowl, several mobile games were advertised during the game.

Exactly - mobile games aren't inherently bad. We don't see many great mobile games because the market presents two large challenges to developers looking to create a well made mobile game.

1) Barrier to entry - many developers that aren't simply looking to cash in from mobile games will avoid a free-to-play model, because they don't have a reason to include in-app purchases. Sadly, this makes selling a good game to a consumer harder, because the app market is saturated with "free" products, it presents a serious hurdle for any developer looking to sell their game for $4.99, $2.99 or even $.99. It's sad, but it's the reality.

2) Your game almost always needs to be made specifically for mobile - mobile is an entirely different format than PC or consoles, and it severely limits the design decisions you're able to make when creating a game. There are very few PC games that would work well on mobile without severely detracting from the experience, and there are very few mobile games that effectively transition to PC without feeling empty. Mobile is a challenging canvas to develop for, it presents a lot of very interesting challenges that don't present themselves on PC or console, and because of this, there's a definite risk associated with any developer wanting to transition to the mobile market from PC or console development - and as it stands, there aren't too many mobile only developers that give a shit about quality.

But, there are some great games for mobile devices. As you mentioned, Monument Valley and Terra Battle are great games, as are Laura Craft & Hitman Go, Ridiculous Fishing, Downwell, Threes, Fallout Shelter, Card Crawl, Subterfuge, Lifeline, Adventures of Poco Eco, Alto's Adventure, The Room Three, The Begger's Ride, Galactic Keep, Crashlands, and many more - for anyone looking for good mobile games, I highly recommend some of the above.

/r/Gaming4Gamers Thread Parent